LIKE A BULLWHIP

As I sit here trying to write this I don't know whether to punch my computer or just break down. Today my mother, who is 92 years old, had to go and begin the process of signing up for SSI which in real terms is Federal Welfare. I, at 66, have no assets, no way to intervene financially and provide for her, other than to kick in the bulk of my own SSI check for rent, food, and etc, which I willingly do.

Somebody asked me the other day why my mother would have to sign up for SSI, "Doesn't she get Social Security?" Yes, but she was born in 1919 and falls into some odd group that gets nearly nothing, $304 a month. She had a small trust her father left her, but it has run out, so she has to go for SSI.

It is at times like these that I resent, in the deepest way possible, the realities that exist and have existed in my own life since I was a child. The endless financial strife and my inability to do anything about it. I have worked since I was 15 years old, that is a half a century, and have nothing to show for it other than a bunch of songs and recordings that have never provided any money at all.

I have endured, and still do, the endless nonsense of, "It's not the money, it's the music!" for 50 years now, as if being paid for my work is somehow out of the question. All I can say to that is, "Why don't you work for free for half a century and then let me know how you're doing?" The pompous nature of those who say this sort of thing, is like a slap across my face with a bullwhip.

I bring this up now, not for my own sake, but with bitter regard to the facts and realities I see unfolding for my mother. I cannot begin to tell you the respect I have for this women. Her strength of character and willingness to push on at 92, as if what she faces is yet but another day to do her best.

When I think of all the charlatans I have dealt with in the music business since 1963, and the abuse that has been dumped on me since I came to the internet in 2007, I wonder what in the hell I was thinking when I started all of this. As recently as the previous post, I have listened to an endless drone of criticism and garbage from people who have not, and could not survive what I lived through and continue to live with.

There are of course some who stand far above that crap, and for them I am eternally grateful, but to be here now, with no way to provide what is needed to make my mother's life comfortable and secure at 92, simply because I was systematically ripped off for every penny ever owed to me from any and all of my endeavors in this god-awful industry is more than I can stomach.

Even as I write these words, I already know that way too many will line up to tell me how lucky we are to get SSI, as if there were no other outcome we could wish for. There will be, as there always is, too many voices spewing pseudo positive rhetoric over the wound. But most of all, and branded into my flesh for eternity, will be the fact that nothing will change, and nothing I say will mean a goddamned thing in the long run.

A COMMENT FROM A FAN

Maybe you suck, because you edit out things and are biased. I have commented on almost every post and you have not published one of them because I ask possibly hard reflective questions to yet another self centered aging, sick baby boomer. You are no different. You are a wanna be. You were a wanna be "blues man" a wanna be Cherokee, and now just washed up on the shore licking your sores. Pathetic. You publish the same womens comments over and over. Barely any guys get published on your b-log, only ones you have a 'warm spot in your heart' for..and that means, someone that will only say nice pitter patter to you. Wow, you show thinness of integrity. What you afraid of bobby-o? You got suckered, because you are a sucker. A white bred- hollywood illusion that had bad reception. yeah I know others that constantly squeel, "I'm being honest " yadda yadda yadda. YOu are just looking for sympathy crumbs and when someone takes the time to comment, you better damn well post them otherwise it shows you are thin-skinned. Just the fact you still smoke cigarettes shows you are a fraud. FUCK YOU BOBBY JAMISON - we are now in the process of distributing your fake LP through torrents that you ripped off the lyrics for by the real Ducey which you have not bothered to mention. You heard his tapes.you re-interpolated and that's why it was not honored. Ducey got screwed and you helped with the vaseline.
By •O•A•T•S•T•A•O•

This is an example of someone's idea of a worthy comment...they wonder why I won't post things like this......so here it is...you decide...

Me lighting up for you...

(part 253) LOST...IN ANOTHER WORLD

On August 1, 1964 there was finally a face, a record, and a label, to go along with the massive hype that had gone on for two months. I'm So Lonely and I Wanna Love You had been hastily thrown together, along with two other songs, Okey Fanokey Baby and Meadow Green, in a single afternoon at a studio on Melrose Ave. in Hollywood, called Nashville West. They were engineered by Charlie Underwood. There was no band and no rehearsal, just a couple of pick-up musicians that Underwood rounded up at the last minute. You would think that after all the publicity Tony would have made sure that the record was carefully and thoughtfully created, but such was not the case.

It was almost an afterthought and treated more as a pesky detail that was finally being attended to. In my own defense, it was what I was allowed to do, or more exactly, what I was told to do. There had been little consideration given to preparing for a recording session. It was a last minute arrangement where Tony simply told me to sing some songs, and the four songs cut were the only finished songs I had. The recordings are more like demos than finished records.

Notwithstanding the built-in weaknesses of the record, I had done the best I could within the confines of where I found myself in 1964. At age 19 I had little if any power over what Alamo did. I was a kid being directed by the one person who'd put me on the map so to speak. There was no room for discussion with Tony other than to listen to him tell me why he was right. "Look what I've done so far!" he'd say, and it was hard to argue with him.

In L.A. the record was viewed with disdain by local radio who refused to play it, but in Detroit Michigan a DJ named Terry Knight, on CKLW radio, broke the single wide open and it raced up their charts. Similarly, Cleveland radio had the same results. I appeared on American Bandstand and other L.A. television shows like Ninth St. West and Lloyd Thaxton. I did a live performance at Ciro's, on The Strip, but L.A. radio wouldn't budge. I was played live shows in Michigan, Ohio, and Canada and opened for The Beach Boys, Jan And Dean, and Chubby Checker.

It was hard, maybe impossible back then, to do what I was doing and not believe that I was succeeding, because on stage in those cities where the record was a hit, I was. A distributor in Detroit once told me that after Dell Shannon's "Runaway," "I'm So Lonely" was the second biggest selling record in Detroit.

When The record took off in the mid-west, a number of major labels made Tony offers to turn it into a national hit, but he rejected all of them. In his mind, he was the next Colonel Tom Parker, the latest version of the "Big Time" operator. In Alamo's world no one could tell him what to do or how to do it. So as I said earlier, this was not only the beginning of Bobby Jameson but the end as well. It is impossible to know what might have happened had Tony been smart enough to join forces with others when the opportunity presented itself.

Not long after what I have described above, Tony went off into another world. He claimed he was being talked to by God and told what to do. After a particularly disturbing event in an office in Beverly Hills, I made the decision to leave him. Strange though it is, it was the Billboard ads that prompted Andrew Oldham to send me a letter saying, "If you ever come to England I'd like to work with you," an offer I'd rejected, but then followed up on. It seemed like a good place to go, because it was as far away from Tony Alamo as I could get.

The picture at the top of this post came out in in August of 1964 and was the ninth and final ad in Billboard Magazine. The picture below came out around December of 1964 in London only months later. It was another ad, for another record, on another label, in another country, and I was completely lost...in another world.

(part 3)
(part 2)
(part 1)

(part 252) FOR A KID NAMED BOBBY JAMESON

Click picture to enlarge to the actual size.

And there was another one. And another, and another. They just kept coming, and just as before, there was no face, no record, or record label mentioned. The many questions raised by the preceding ads were left unanswered. The 2 page spread above was literally a billboard within Billboard Magazine. It said nothing at all while at the same time claimed an imaginary pay off within the near future.

When your goal in life is to become a recognized performer, as mine surely was in 1964, the mere fact that your name appears in print is a dangerous and addictive lure, and something I developed an immediate craving for at 19 years old. With no understanding of how things really worked, I was incapable of viewing this oddity outside of my own self-glorification and instant notoriety, which later proved a costly mistake.

The reaction by the industry to the 2 page ad was mixed. It was ridiculed by some and heralded by others, but in my mind it was all about me. I had by this time begun to morph into someone else. I was quickly abandoning the quiet unsure of myself kid I'd started out as, for a more self-assured and conceited version of the new Bobby Jameson. My singular goal of "stardom" was seemingly coming true, and I was completely unequipped to handle what was happening.

As if "The Star Of The Century" and "The World's Next Phenomenon" weren't outlandish enough, the 7th week topped them, by claiming I would soon be "The New King." Try to imagine what the mind of a 19 year old blossoming ego-maniac did with that picture. As you might have guessed, I bought into it hook, line, and sinker, as if it were my birthright, and to make matters worse Tony was constantly telling me it was true, which it was not. The reality back then was I wanted it to be true. I wanted it so badly that I deluded myself into believing it was.

Click picture to enlarge to the actual size.

The industry people in L.A. were by now beginning to find out that this so-called phenomenon was a local nobody, and that the Billboard ads were the brainchild of one Tony Alamo. Without much information about how Alamo was looked upon back then by those in the industry, it appears that he was disliked intensely before I ever met him. He was a hustler and had made unwelcomed waves by selling bootlegged oldies through the mail with a company he owned called Mr. Maestro Records, something I learned of after two armed Federal Postal agents showed up at his apartment to question him about mail fraud.

Be that as it may, Tony had my confidence back then, and probably no one could have persuaded me to question him while the ads kept running. In my view he was single handedly changing my life for what I thought was the better. He had pulled me out of the darkness of obscurity and pushed me onto the world stage, where I would be dissected under the bright lights of scrutiny. In short, he took me from nobody to somebody in a matter of weeks. He so altered my psyche, and I let him, that it became impossible to ever go back to who or where I once was.

End of part 2...to be continued. (part 1 below)

(part 251) THE BEGINNING AND END OF BOBBY JAMESON

In case you are wondering why I am even bringing up the subject of these Billboard ads, I will explain. Just recently I became reacquainted with my old friend Ralph Molina from Crazy Horse, and one of the first questions he asked me was "Do you still have those Billboard ads that were run on you in the 60's?" I said I didn't, but it prompted me to go to Billboard's archives and dig them up. I thought it was interesting that after four decades Ralph still remembered and asked about them. Of course why wouldn't he, he was there, along with Danny Whitten, and Billy Talbot the day we saw the first one.

So what I am trying to write here is difficult, but I will try to examine the subject of the Billboard Magazine ad campaign run on me in 1964. Those 9 weeks of promotion changed my life forever, and in hindsight, were the catalyst for not only my beginning, but as well, my simultaneous downfall as a recording artist. The truth is, there was no way to live up to the hype.

One has to keep in mind that I am referencing a subject from over four decades ago, when the world as you know it now did not exist. This happened before The Byrds, before Dylan went electric, before all of what eventually occurred on the west-coast with folk-rock, pop-psyche, and the hippie movement's mark on music in the U.S. took place. It was a time of no cell phones, no computers, video tape, or any kind of instant access to anything. There were only a few channels on black and white television, and newspapers, magazines, radio, record players, and reel to reel tape recorders.

Two of the prominent forces in the music industry in 1964, along with AM radio, were Billboard and Cashbox magazines, who reported weekly, on all things related to the music industry. Those two publications were on the top rung of reporting, world wide. They were the last word on what was happening, and was going to happen, in the business of management, A and R, music publishing, distribution, and the manufacturing and sale of records commercially. They were read by everyone involved in or interested in the music business, and were considered the bibles of the industry, with Billboard being the most prominent.

Because what I am saying here is factually accurate, it makes no difference what my opinion is, because facts are not controlled by opinion, they just are what they are, facts. In 1964, The Beatles dominated the world of music, and everyone else was playing catch-up. It was an atmosphere of mind-numbing searches for something or someone to compete with The Beatle's undisputed position.

With this as a rough framework, I will try to explain the abnormality of those 9 weeks of advertising run in both Billboard and Cashbox initially, but which concluded in Billboard only. For the sake of discussion, I was admittedly a nobody at the time, other than a 19 year old kid on the streets of Hollywood with a dream like many others. By chance, I met a person in a coffee shop, and for whatever reason, was picked by him to be the center piece of those ads.

I was initially presented to the world as "The Star Of The Century," by Tony Alamo. I had not been told, nor did I expect to see my name in the pages of anything, let alone in those two magazines on an afternoon in a coffee shop in Hollywood. It was then and there that I saw the ads for the first time, along with four friends, Danny Whitten, Billy Talbot, Ralph Molina, and Bruce Hinds.

You may think that I must have known about this, but you'd be wrong. Neither I, nor any of the friends I just mentioned, knew about it until we saw it together in the Carolina Pines coffee shop for the first time. I had no arrangement with Tony. If anything, we all considered him a big bullshitter until we saw the ads. The picture used for the first ad was probably snapped in the parking lot of that coffee shop weeks or months earlier without my knowledge of what it's ultimate use would be.

Within a short time, the 2nd ad ran, and then the 3rd. Within weeks people were talking about them saying, "Who the hell is Bobby Jameson, I've never heard of him?" They wanted to know why they couldn't see my face, and why anybody would run ads on someone no one had ever heard of, with no record or label. During the first 8 weeks of ads no record label or actual record was mentioned. It was not until the 9th week that my face, name of the record, and label were shown.

click on picture to enlarge

People were not only aware of what was happening in Billboard, but many were immediately put off by it because they saw it as too grandiose, too expensive and arrogant, which it surely was. But what they didn't know, was that there was no record label or record referred to because it hadn't been made yet. To this day I still don't know if Talamo, as a record label, even existed at the time the first ads were run. There was nothing more than a faceless name and no knowledge of who was behind it. The intrigue came from the fact that it kept happening week after week, so people waited, some reluctantly, to see if there would be another one.

End of part 1...to be continued

PICTURES OF DREAMS...BOBBY JAMESON Billboard Magazine 1964...

These are most of the pictures from the 1964 Billboard Magazine ad campaign which ran for 9 weeks.

Click on pictures to enlarge

                                               3/4 page ad

                                            Full page ad

                             Third page of 3 page ad...other 2 below

      2 pages of 3 page ad...3rd page above

3 page ad...4th page below

Page 4 of 4 page ad

9th and final week of ads...Full page with face and record made known